Monday, March 05, 2007

Reflections from Term 3

The weekend was very tiring. I think this would happen in every ISB student's life. He or she would have the best Holi party ever, only on campus. It was awesome. Six glasses of Bhang and in about four hours I was floating. It was an amazing feeling. I just loved the whole day. A riot of colors followed since 9.30am in the morning. Towards the end people started tearing the t-shirts of the men. You can see my Flickr Tab for some photos that I have borrowed from Doc.

By Term 3, you are almost done with your studies. I mean, the people who wanted to catch the best of the grades would have done that by now and from now on, for them, its just keep sailing the right way and stay on the good side of the tide. For the others, this term is to catch up for all that was left behind in the last two terms.

Corporate Finance - taught by Bhagwan Chowdhry for three sections. The rest have another prof. One Prof, who will let you know clearly as to what he would expect from you in the exam and what you need to study. Although I wasn't too keen about knowing stuff in finance, his classes were interesting. I vaguely remember Black Scholes, Modigliani Miller, WACC and CAPM. He always drew parallels to his family and the students in general, so you wouldn't really fall asleep. His exams were purely multiple choice. Make sure that you read, I'd rather say mug up, all the sample question papers and the answers. You will get around 30% questions from that stuff. Also read some extra stuff available from the textbook's webpage. That might be useful too.

Managerial Accounting - Two accounting disasters in one term. Thats something you can avoid this term. Its definitely a pain if you had assignments to submit for both. The other sections had assignments every day for Corp Fin. Thank god, we had none. But we had some horrible case studies where we had to crunch numbers. My group mates were my saviors for accounting assignments. Prof Sri Sridharan was the ManAcc prof for us. Before him, Prof. Khalid Nainar took the first 5 classes and introduced us to the course. Once Sridharan was in-charge, the assignments started pouring in. This was the term where we had something like three or four assignments due the next day, all due at the same time. I remember the night-out I put for a silly case in ManAcc. It was called Kota Fibres and I still don't have a clue of what that case was all about. Sridharan is a very nice person to talk to. You must try and catch him during breakfast and engage him for a nice conversation. If you are a CA, then be prepared for some questions about Indian Accounting. That's a forewarning.

Entrepreneurship - taught by S Venkataraman and Rama Velamuri. Awesome course. They say that entrepreneurship cannot be taught in a classroom. Yes, that is definitely true. But this course exposes you to some of the best entrepreneurs, rather entr-based case studies in different industries such that you get a very deep understanding of the whole idea of entrepreneurship. Lots to read and we had 40% class participation. A very well organized class, handled extremely well by both professors. Prof. Venkat, being a BITSian, gave us some of his insights about the field and his BITS days. Imagine learning from a person who wrote the initial business plan for the Wipro Information Technology. This Darden Prof had done work in WIPRO that was worth 7 yrs in less than 2.5 years. If you prepare well for this class, then you will rock.

Operations Management - taught by Prof Sridhar Seshadri and Prof Sudhakar Deshkmukh. Prof Seshadri is perhaps the best prof i have listened to for operations related stuff. He is amazing. The insights he brings into the OPS case studies are awesome. He deals with a few simple case studies but the way he handles the case is just enough to throw your thought process off-guard. It helps to prepare yourself for his class. You can get a few CP marks because not too many people would study to make a CP in OPS. Prof Deshmukh, the Danny Devito of the ISB, is a great man. His book is the recommended reading for the course. His concepts on supply chain management will totally bombard you. He'd always play this music on his laptop when you go for a break. When the music ends, he will start the class, no matter what. Each Prof has his own way to handle his students.

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